I Will Be Your Undoing
by Jaded
Summary: Colleagues. Best friends. The love of each other’s life? What is Tony to Carol, and Carol to Tony? Are they everything to one another, or are they destined to be each other’s undoing? An on-going series of vignettes from Tony and Carol’s points-of-view.
1. Path of Cinders

**I Will Be Your Undoing**

Colleagues. Best friends. The love of each other's life? What is Tony to Carol, and Carol to Tony? Are they everything to one another, or are they destined to be each other's undoing? A series of vignettes from Tony and Carol's points-of-view.

_Summary: Events take place during episode 4x01, "Time to Murder and Create," immediately after Tony finds out Carol has left for South Africa and is not coming back._

**Disclaimer:** Characters belong to Val McDermid, with gratitude to Robson Green and Hermione Norris for their inspiring portrayals of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan.

* * *

**Path of Cinders**

He does everything to drown the thought: She is gone.

He follows this DI Fielding around trying to get her to listen. _Why won't she listen?_ _Doesn't she see? Doesn't she understand?_ He haunts the Bradfield station and pushes his way through even when it is obvious they are trying to block him out.

His nerves are raw. His temper flares up hot and bright and without warning. _Douse me in petrol and set me on fire._ The thought circulates through his brain, skidding around the corners of the gray matter that is now gone. He wouldn't care, wouldn't care at all except that there are missing girls, dead girls, crying girls wanting to be saved, and he knows he can help find them if only someone would _listen_.

So he persists. He offers his opinion. They shoot him down.

And then DI Fielding says Carol's name, and it's like he's being stabbed with the reminder that she didn't even bother to say goodbye, that maybe he meant just so little to her to even consider that he would miss her. That he was capable of feeling something. Over and over. Carol. Carol. Stab. Stab. He's bleeding all over the place and all he can do is laugh. He cannot think about it. If he thinks Johannesburg, he'll scream. If he thinks, _Carol, why did you leave me,_ he'll burst into flames. He cannot function this way, so he has to push it inside, bury it so deep and so far away that it will rest there for a thousand years undisturbed. He must switch to autopilot. Examine the case. Profile the killer.

He cannot think about it if he wants to function today and tomorrow, but he has to know it's there. Because it is a part of who he is. Every molecule of him contains a little bit of her, though she wants nothing more to do with him.

They've already cut out a part of his brain, and she, a piece of his heart. He only has his work now. If they take that away, then there's nothing left.


	2. Key

**I Will Be Your Undoing**

by Jaded

_Rating: PG-13_

Summary: Carol is in South Africa, plagued by sleepless, dreams, and memories of things not done.

**2: Key**

When her bed is lonely and the night is long, it is still his face she sees when she touches herself in the dark. It's his body pressed against hers. His breath against her neck, warm and possessive. It is his bluest eye looking at her—looking into her—memorizing the contours of a face he already knows by heart. It is his name she cries out when the music crescendos and his voice that is the song in her ear. When she is alone, she is not afraid to say his name aloud. "Tony. Tony. Tony." Like a prayer.

It's all imagination, of course. This never happened. He never happened.

On nights like these, Carol finds it hard to fall asleep.

It is not Bradfield outside her window, but Johannesburg. She's kicked off her sheets. The night is warm, and her eyes are full of bitter weeping. Hard tears because she still hasn't been able to get past the lump in her throat at the smallest of memories of him—his blue plastic bag, her hand tracing his jaw line, his house smelling of stale coffee and burnt cheese toast, those late nights, heads bowed together in study, the air between them fairly vibrating with wanting to touch and be touched—three years and it's still hard to move on. And she has tried, God knows she has tried.

Her heart, since she's left England, has remained untouched. She looks and waits, and wonders if it will ever be possible again, or if it's too late and she's locked it up with the key a thousand miles away.

When exhaustion finally sweeps her into sleep, she remembers what effortless chemistry feels like, how heady and delicious and delirious perfect attraction is. She tries not to think the word _love_. One day, she thinks, as the world around her falls away into dreams, she might be brave enough to go and find it again.


End file.
